Revelation 3:14-22
So turn to Revelation chapter
3, 14 to 22. This is the last of the seven
letters to the seven churches. And this is the letter to the
church at Laodicea. And we’ll read from there God’s
word to his church then and to his church now. Next week, we’re
gonna do chapter four and five as a whole. So next week in preparation
for evening service, read four and five. It’s the throne of
God. It’s the heaven throne room, heavenly throne room. So it’d
be a good one to read together. But let’s hear from chapter three,
verse 14. To the end, it says, unto the
angel of the church in Laodicea write the words of the amen,
the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
And this is what the amen says. I know your works. You are neither
hot nor cold. Would that you were either cold
or hot. So because you are lukewarm and either hot or cold, I will
spit you out of my mouth. For you say I am rich, I have
prospered. I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched,
pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me
gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white garments
so that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness
may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you
may see. Those whom I love I reprove and
discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the
door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and
opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he
with me. to the one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with
me on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my father on
his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear
what the spirit says to the churches.” Probably about 10 or 12 years
ago, at one of our summer general synod meetings, This was early
on in my ministry and I was just there kind of watching and observing
and seeing what’s what, learning the ways of our denomination.
There was a report and the report was on a strategic, it was one
of those interesting committees, the Committee on Strategic Planning
for the Denomination. And the group of men who were
on this committee, they kept having meetings, they kept taking
minutes, And every year they kept giving a report and their
report was, we have nothing to report. Typical Presbyterianism. Well, one year they finally did
report. And their report on the strategic planning of our denomination
was kind of a scathing report. It was a lot like one of these
letters to the seven churches. And the phrase that was mentioned
in this report something that has stuck in my mind, and I think
in many ways it was a true assessment. It was a group of men, many of
them who had been in our denomination a long time, and they had seen
and studied and noticed a pattern of maybe indifference. We’re
ARP, we’re Presbyterian. We do what we do because it’s
what we’ve always done. And so at the end of the report,
it said basically this, the ARP church is addicted to mediocrity. And unless we change, we are
going to become irrelevant into the 21st century. Oh, it made
so many people mad. How dare you say we are addicted
to mediocrity? And on and on it went. And I’m
thankful that in the last 10, 12 years as I’ve watched synod
meeting after synod meeting, faithful men have stood up and
said, nope, The status quo is not good enough. We want to be
faithful to the gospel. We want to be relevant in a gospel-oriented
way to the world. And I’ve watched men, especially
a lot of young men, come out of seminary with a zeal for the
gospel, a heartfelt desire to worship God, to evangelize the
nations. And in those 10, 12 years since
that report was given, we’ve seen wonderful things like Reformed
University Fellowship begin on several campuses through the
ARP church in partnership with the PCA. You’ve seen Josh Grimm
come up here. He’s usually my June and July
fill-in preacher, but he won’t make it this year, so we have
some others. But we’ve seen not only campus
ministry, we’ve seen a lot of new churches planted that are
healthy and strong and love to worship the Lord and many other
wonderful signs. But it took hearing something
hard. And it took hearing something
hard and doing something about it. And that’s something for
which we ought to be thankful as a church and a denomination
that took a hard look at itself and said, we don’t like what
we see, we’d like to do something about it. Now, what if the assessment
were to come not to our denomination, but to our local church? and
it was something of the same, you’re addicted to mediocrity.
You’re happy with status quo, or even worse, you’re lukewarm. Well, in this last letter to
the seven churches, the church at Laodicea, Jesus isn’t. Well,
he’s not very nice, but I do hope you’ll see he is full of
grace. So the assessment he gives to
the church at Laodicea is you are lukewarm. Now, last week
was hot. And if you’re hot, you need to
stay hydrated. And there’s nothing like cold
water for refreshment and hydration. At the end of our beach trip
last week on the kitchen counter, there were lots of half-empty
water bottles. Now, do you think we gathered
them up and drank them? If we were home and not on vacation,
we would have poured them all in something and watered the
plants with them. But since we weren’t, we ceremonially unscrewed
the caps and dumped them in the sink. Nobody likes warm water. Nobody likes old water. Nobody
likes stale water. And so that’s the picture we
get here. The spiritual fervor, or lack
thereof, at the church at Laodicea is lukewarm. It’s not fresh.
It’s lukewarm and Jesus says, I will spit you out. There’s
something about lukewarm water. There’s something about their
lukewarm water and the calcium that was in it that caused nausea. It was something not to be enjoyed
and to bring refreshment, but something to be spit out. Their
water supply was about six miles away and their water supply,
source of water was actually a hot spring. And as it traveled
six miles down an aqueduct, it cooled off but was still lukewarm. And so you begin to get the picture
here. Their water supply, they knew what Jesus was saying, was
lukewarm water, not fit for refreshment. And Jesus, who is the amen, the
faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation,
says, I will spit you out. Not a very gracious assessment, we might
say. But God is saying to them, you’re lukewarm. There’s no commendation
for you. You’re tepid. You have embers
among ash. There’s nothing about you that
inspires. There’s no zeal. There’s no fervor.
Your heart is not in it. You’re indifferent. Your church
is mediocre. You’re not contagious. You’re not going to do what will
turn the world upside down. This was not a church that was
proclaiming salvation in Jesus name. This was not a church full
of people who were witnessing to the world around the power
of the gospel. One of the things we like to
say is saved people sing, right? You can always tell the health
of a congregation Do they sing? Do they sing loudly? Do they
sing well? Do they sing like they mean it? But there’s also
something about saved people. Not only do they sing, but they
minister the name of the Lord Jesus. They can’t help but tell
others who God is and what he’s done. We heard a good little
praise report tonight about how the Lord was at work in someone’s
life. And guess what? They went to a family event and
we heard testimony. They told others about it. That’s
what We want to see in the life of the saints, not lukewarm,
not indifferent, neither hot nor cold. We want to see, I suppose,
hot, right? We want to be on fire for the
Lord. We want to be full of joy. I
suppose you’d want cold water to drink, but you’d want to be
warm and hot in your service for the Lord. What is he saying
to the church at Laodicea? He’s saying, you’ve excluded
Christ. That’s why you’re lukewarm, and
he will exclude you, or more literally, he will spit you out. So there’s the assessment. Not a good one. But what about
the reproof? There’s more that he needs to
say to them. He says you’re rich, oh, but
you’re really poor. You’re materially rich. In this
world’s eyes, you’re rich, but you’re really poor. In fact,
your prosperity has lulled you into this lukewarm, mediocre
sleep. This church at Laodicea was at
an east-west crossroads. You know how it is when an interstate
is run through a town, everything goes off the old main road and
it goes out on the new. What used to be on Church Street
is now down at Interstate 85 and 40. Nobody builds a cracker
barrel in town. They build it out by the interstate.
Well, Laodicea was at one of those east-west interchanges.
And so they prospered. There was lots of commerce, lots
of trade. They were not only at this east-west
crossroads, they had succeeded and specialized in what we might
today call ear, nose, and throat medicine. There were banks. There was clothing. They dealt
in wool. It was a place of wealth and
innovation. There was prosperity. And what Jesus is saying to them
is a good reminder back to that proverb that says, and say, I have attained it for
myself. Prosperity has landed upon them
and it has eclipsed their view of God and their growth and grace. And so their spiritual condition
is not a good one. In fact, he says, you’re wretched,
you’re pitiful, you’re poor, you’re blind and you’re naked
and you need Christ. You’re boasting in your riches.
and you need to boast in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what
does he offer them? He offers them a chance to quit
living as if they got the world by the tail and they say, I’m
good, I don’t need Jesus, I’m good to go, I’ve got all I really
need. But God says, nope, you’re really bad off, you’re poor,
you’re wretched, you’re pitiable, you’re blind. and he is nauseated
by the Laodicean Christians. So what’s the solution? Well,
he gives them the solution, and the solution is nothing special.
It’s just the gospel. Well, that’s special, isn’t it?
He doesn’t give them a 12-step program, a nine weeks to this,
or eight ways to have a happy life. He simply says, come to
me and buy from me without money what will bless. You think you’re
rich, you’re poor. you’ve helped people to see,
you’re actually blind and need salve for your eyes. You are
naked. I can give you these white garments
of righteousness, but there’s something that they must do.
They must repent. They must be zealous. No more
cold, no more, neither cold nor hot, no more lukewarm, but they
must respond to the call of the gospel. What does Jesus say?
He says, behold, I stand at the door and I knock. If anyone hears
my voice, I will enter, and I will have a meal with you. Now, we
could say this isn’t real nice of Jesus. We could go back to
10, 12 years ago at our General Synod meeting when the scathing
report was that our denomination was addicted to mediocrity, and
we can whine and fuss like we tend to do when we receive the
scathing report. Now, you understand, we don’t
mind giving the scathing report. Right, we don’t mind being the
giver of it. We don’t mind going on Yelp and saying this restaurant
stinks. We don’t mind going on Google and giving a bad review.
You’ll pay for this. We don’t mind sitting down someone
or maybe, yes, Facebook them. We do it the chicken way, right?
We talk about people behind their backs. We don’t mind dishing
it out. That’s what we’re looking for,
right? But we can’t take it. But I wanna encourage us in this
way, when Jesus assesses us, even if we don’t like what we
hear, we should see it as a sign of grace. What does he say? I
reprove the ones that I love. How would you like it if you,
maybe this is the case for some of you, if your parents never
really said good job, bad job? Kind of neither. We want to know. We want feedback, don’t we? We
want to succeed in life. We want to have successes. And
so it’s good to have criticism. It’s good to have assessments. It’s actually a grace of Almighty
God to walk in the middle of a church and to say, you people
need to wake up. Isn’t that a grace of Almighty
God? You people need to realize how
poor you are and how rich I can make you. That’s what Jesus is
doing. He’s offering himself. He’s offering
the gospel. He’s offering to them what will
save them. You know, it could be very well
said a lot of churches are well on their way to hell. They don’t worship Christ. They
don’t preach Christ. They don’t love Christ. They don’t serve Christ.
They don’t minister in the name of Christ. Oh, they do plenty
of good. Maybe there’s even money in the bank. The building shines. The parking lot is full on a
given day. Those are not the things that
save though. What saves is humility and repentance and obedience. And Jesus makes a promise to
those who realize that. He says, to the one who conquers,
I’ll grant him to sit with me on my throne. You can sit on
your throne in this life, or you can sit on the throne of
God with him in heaven. He says, as I also conquered
and sat down with my father on his throne, so he who has an
ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. Let me
just end with this last little thought. We’ve looked at seven
letters to the seven churches. Every single one of them have
ended this way. Let him who has ears hear what
the spirit says. So here’s maybe a warning, maybe
a caution, maybe a challenge. We should never stop being a
listening church. We should listen to the voice
of Jesus. And if he says, good job, I’ll praise to him. If he
says, let’s step it up, By His grace, let’s step it up. If we
maybe are lukewarm or half-hearted, that sort of thing, we should
ask and pray that He might give us that Holy Spirit, Scripture-centered
knowledge that prods us on to better things, gracious things.
Let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Our Lord, we want to have ears
that hear, and so we pray that You would speak to us as a church.
Help us to love what You love and to live the way that you
command so that we are not lukewarm, but we are valuable in the sight
of your kingdom, valuable in the efforts of gospel work, that
people see our zeal, they feel our fervor, and they want to
be part of what you are doing in this place and throughout
the world. Help us, we ask in the name of
Christ. Amen.